Internet Copyright Violation
Posted on | May 9, 2007 | No Comments
Internet Copyright Violation: Has Your Internet Content Been Hijacked?
Have you been the victim of an Internet copyright violation? It’s a growing area of concern for online entrepreneurs as more and more people recognize how highly the search engines value sites with lots of relevant, optimized content. Those who lack the resources (and morality) to derive content the legal way will simply steal it and wait to see if there are consequences.
It happened recently to an online business we know. For years, the owner had ranked well for her top three keyword phrases. But one day when checking her rankings, she discovered a new site in the search engine results pages for one of her terms.
When she visited the site, she found a webpage that was plagiarizing her sales copy, word for word.
Had she not acted quickly, her site could have been penalized by the search engines for displaying duplicate content. (The engines still are not very adept at determining which site is the originator of content and which is the copycat.)
A few stern emails later and the culprit was shamed into removing her words from his site. But what if he hadn’t?
What do you do if the content you spent hours creating (or paid someone to create for you) gets stolen? In the relatively untamed jungle of the Internet, is there recourse for copyright violation? And how do you even find out if your content or images have been filched?
How To Detect Internet Plagiarism
You could wait until you stumble upon it by accident, like the website owner mentioned earlier. Or you can take a more proactive approach and start seeking out signs of copyright infringement. There are several ways to go about this.
One way is to copy random snippets of text from your site and do an exact search (with quotations around the phrase… “like this.”) for them in Google, Yahoo! or the other major search engines. If the precise, word-for-word snippet appears on any site other than your own, you’ve likely been copied.
A more comprehensive way to accomplish the same goal is through the free search tool: www.copyscape.com
You just enter the webpage URL you want tracked and Copyscape seeks and reveals all other sites that display the same content as your page, whether the entire text or just a fragment have been borrowed. It also offers free warning banners you can add to your webpages… not much legal heft, but they might intimidate the meeker copycats.
The paid version of Copyscape has extra features such as an automatic Internet scan that searches for copyright violations of your content every day and reports back to you.
How To Prevent Plagiarism
Copyright laws are harder to defend on the Internet due to differences in international plagiarism laws and the difficulty in prosecuting across borders. Therefore, it’s wise to take measures to discourage copyright violations in the first place:
1. Include a copyright © symbol and statement of ownership on all your work, including documents and images. (For example: “This article is the property of Positioning-Search-Engines.com and may not be reproduced without the owner’s permission.”)
2. Add a section to your website that outlines the Terms and Conditions under which use of your copyrighted material would be permissible. (For example, you may want to allow publishers to use your web content as long as they include a link to your site or a short promotional blurb about your company.)
3. If you are very protective of certain items, you can register them with your local copyright office. There may be a fee for this service.
How To Combat Plagiarism
If you believe you have already been the victim of Internet plagiarism, it’s best to move quickly. The thieves need to know immediately that their actions have been detected and that violators will be vigorously pursued.
First, send a firm but polite email to the site owners asking them to remove the illegally copied materials. Allow them a short period of time to respond to your email and/or take the action you requested.
If that doesn’t work…
Use Whois.sc to find the site owner’s phone number and call them directly.
If that doesn’t work…
Contact their webhosting company and alert them to the copyright violation.
If that doesn’t work…
Send the copycats a “cease and desist” letter drafted by your lawyer and on their letterhead. This letter is often a more strongly-worded demand for action and since it comes on legal letterhead, it is often taken more seriously.
And while you’re doing all that…
Report the infringement to the search engines where the infringement appears in their search results, explaining your ownership of the material and the URL where the copyright violation appears. You can use this free archive of webpages to prove your site was the first one to display the disputed copy: http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
How to Report a Copyright Violation
- Google’s copyright violation page: http://www.google.com/dmca.html
- Yahoo‘s page: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/copyright/copyright.html
- MSN’s page: http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyrtInfrg.htm
- AOL’s page: http://site.aol.com/copyright/infringement.html
You went to a lot of trouble and expense to create your online content and images. It’s good to know that there are measures you can take to detect, prevent and stop those who engage in “creative borrowing”.
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